Beehive

Aren't the stripe-less bees cute?!

This was a lot of fun! Basically it is a cake made out of layers of brioche soaked with a honey based simple syrup and stacked with pastry cream between the layers. It is "iced" with bruléed Italian meringue piped on to look, apparently, like the outside of a beehive. Then just a few marzipan bees for decoration (strategically placed to cover mistakes in the piping.) Unfortunately we ran out of time to make the bees in class and I forgot to take the black marzipan home, so my bees didn't have stripes. Ah well, they were still cute!

The whole thing, without the "bees."

Taste-wise I loved the brioche soaked in the honey simple syrup and the pastry cream were excellent. The meringue on the outside didn't thrill me. It was just too sweet and a slightly damp, marshmallowy texture (which is what it should be, I just don't like it.)